


Fuchal

by Michael_McGruder



Series: IX [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2547335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_McGruder/pseuds/Michael_McGruder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After 200 years, Cloister the Stupid returns to his people on Fuchal, and Rimmer picks the wrong kind of mushrooms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kristine Kochanski was beginning to see exactly where Jack Torrance was coming from. She was beginning to understand why after so many months snowbound in the Overlook Hotel he had tried to take an axe to his family, and empathized completely.

Kristine Kochanski was getting stir crazy. She was beginning to feel like a sardine in a tin can. Okay, a tin can the size of Alaska, but a tin can nonetheless. Everywhere you turned, dull metal bulkheads. Girders and reinforced steel. Bolts and rivets.

She was sick of it. It was making her ratty and confrontational. She kept seeing REDRUM in her mind’s eye while she bickered with Lister, which was becoming a far too frequent activity.

Her heart ached for rolling green hills and a crisp, clean wind blowing through trees. This is what motivated her to make the dubious decision to go moon hopping with Kryten.

Back in her own dimension, she and her Dave would do it all the time. They understood the importance of getting out of the ship once in a while. The crew of this Red Dwarf were much more skittish about venturing too far away from Short Red and Ugly after some two hundred and two years of searching for the misplaced mining ship.

She understood their misgivings, but she made them understand that if she didn’t get out for a little space walk she was going to kill the last man alive. It would have been her preference to go alone, but even with cabin fever at its zenith, she knew how incredibly dangerous it was to traverse space on one’s own.

Kryten was selected as Kochanski’s specific qualifications for the jaunt included “not having a penis,” and wielding a pair of industrial bolt clippers added, “accommodations can be made for anyone who wishes to tag along.” Lister, Rimmer, and the Cat, slightly green, cupped their genitalia protectively and politely declined.

Now, sitting in the pilot’s seat of Starbug, she held a mug of hot tea and watched the scanner scope for moons or planetoids with a breathable atmosphere. Kryten waddled into the cockpit with two bowls of ice cream.

“Men,” Kryten tutted. “They just don’t get it, do they?” Kochanski raised a bemused eyebrow at the mechanoid.

“Excuse me?”

“They’re so caught up with their sports and their machines… if only they would just listen once in a while and not leave wet towels on the floor.” Kryten shook his head and sighed dramatically. “Would it kill them to be a little more sensitive?”

“Kryten,” Kochanski said.

“Yes, mum?”

“Just… stop.”

“Yes, mum,” Kryten said sheepishly, nibbling at his ice cream.

He and Kochanski had become much chummier since the mechanoid had been classified as a woman by Red Dwarf’s penal system, and the two were forced to share a cell in the Tank. In spite of this, Kryten still had difficulty emulating the behaviour of proper girlfriends.

His only frame of reference was from his favourite soap opera, Androids. The women on the show mostly did a lot of shopping, drinking, and sleeping with each others boyfriends or husbands. The most Kryten would be able to accommodate would be the drinking. As much as he loved Mr. Lister, Kryten wasn’t really prepared to start lubing up his groinal socket for the man.

Kochanski studied the scanner scope with a hopeful expression.

“According to the computer, there’s a moon 12,000 gee-gooks from our location with a breathable atmosphere.” Kryten looked over her shoulder as she reviewed the read out. “Not only that, but it’s lush with vegetation!”

Starbug accelerated closer to the verdant moon.

“The scanner scope is picking up life forms,” she said. “Thousands of them.”

“Probably GELFs.”

“They seem to be concentrated in the mountains. If we stick to the valleys we should be able to avoid them.” Kryten fussed behind her, wringing his mechanical hands together.

“Surely, mum, it would be more prudent to avoid inhabited planets altogether?”

“The chances of a planet with trees and oxygen and no GELFs are slimmer than picking five aces out of a deck of cards. It’ll be fine, Kryten.”

 

“Alright, mateys!” Lister grinned, holding six cans of lager precariously in his hands. “It’s boy’s night!”

The Cat and Rimmer sat at the table in the sleeping quarters, the former less enthusiastic than the latter. Rimmer tried not to scowl at the feast of anus watering curries laid out before them. Rimmer hated curries, and elected to have a cheese omelet instead.

“I always enjoyed boy’s night out back on Io,” Rimmer said wistfully.

“Aren’t friends generally required to go out with?” Lister asked.

“Oh, no, I didn’t go out,” Rimmer clarified. “Boy’s night out was when my brothers went out and partied, and I was able to reorganize my trainspotting notes in peace.”

Lister sat down, pulled a cigarette out of the folded ears of his deerstalker hat, and started dealing cards. He was only into his fourth beer when Kryten’s face appeared on the quarter’s vid screen.

“Excuse me, sirs,” he said. “I hate to interrupt, but Miss Kochanski and I seem to have encountered a bit of a road bump in our trip.” The sound of a fire extinguisher could be heard in the background, its vaporous discharge floating behind his head.

“That road bump was a mountain,” Kochanski shouted in the background.

“What? Are you guys alright?” Lister asked.

“Miss Kochanski and myself are unharmed, however Starbug was damaged in the landing and is not flight worthy at the moment. We will require assistance to repair it.”

The Cat and Rimmer rolled their eyes and Lister told them they’d be on their way over.

 

Starbug sat smoking on the edge of a dense forest of black green coniferous trees whose tops were obscured by mist. Kryten and Kochanski spent the better part of an hour searching for one of the landing jets that had been knocked off the bug during their descent.

The pair scouted the surrounding area, Kryten scanning the local flora with his psiscan. Not far from the bug, they came across a large lake. It stood still as polished black glass. Looming ahead of them was the moon’s single mountain, its peak hidden by the mist.

A mild wind rolled through, bringing a sudden curtain of rain shower. Kryten tutted.

“We should return to Starbug.” Kochanski didn’t seem to hear him. She closed her eyes, tilted her head up, and smiled. This was everything she wanted.

 

Blue Midget homed in on the coordinates of the crashed Starbug, and landed with a molar loosening crunch.

“I’m telling you, it’s the gearbox,” Lister insisted.

 

“Not a bad place for a crash,” Lister said, looking around the dense forest. Kochanski sidled up to him with a grin still plastered to her face. “You seem to be in a better mood,” he said, surprised.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said, taking a generous lung full of the clean air. “It reminds me so much of my family’ summer home in Galloway.”

“Well, we’d better start fixing that landing jet before it gets dark.” Lister had less enthusiasm for the woods than Kochanski. He felt far more at ease in the middle of a dirty city, illuminated by the odd burning car.

“Okay, but,” her playful smile lingered, “we should camp here tonight. It will be fun.”

Rimmer’s ears perked up at the mention of camping. It would be an excellent opportunity to evaluate how much of his Space Scouts training he remembered. True, it had been almost 30 years since he was a scout, give or take three million, and the last time he’d nearly been cannibalized by the other scouts, but he was confident that once he’d gotten in to the swing of things, it would all come flooding back.

“If we’re going to stay over night, we’ll have to forage for some food,” Kryten said. “All the food supplies on Starbug are out.” Lister turned on Rimmer.

“I thought you said you’d restocked it!”

“It's on Friday’s daily goal list,” he defended.

“It’s Saturday!”

“Next Friday. It was on next Friday’s daily goal list.”

Eight eyes collectively rolled in their sockets.

“Right, well. In that case, why don’t you and the Cat look around for something edible while we repair the landing jet.”

Both the Cat and Rimmer were eager to escape any kind of manual labor and only complained minimally about their assignment. Carrying containers, the pair set off together, but it took about 0.68 seconds for them to split up.

It wasn’t long before Rimmer found bushes of fat, edible looking berries. He was able to quickly fill a good portion of his container before moving on. He came upon small clearing, the ground dotted with pale, spongy looking fungi.

Morels! He couldn’t believe his luck. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed morels. Being on the more luxury side of dining, Red Dwarf didn’t bother carrying them.

Rimmer fished out his well worn Space Scouts pocket knife and started harvesting. He was kicking himself for not restocking Starbug now. With a little butter and salt, they would be perfect.

When he’d put enough in his container, he sat back for a moment thinking. It would take them a while to fix Starbug, and they probably wouldn’t mind having him out of the way.

Rimmer gathered some twigs and dry pine needles to start a small fire and started skewering mushrooms.

 

After a good nap in a high tree, the Cat wandered back to “camp” with impeccable timing. Dirty and tired, the three had just finished packing away their equipment. The Cat flashed them a well rested smile.

“Where’s the food you were supposed to be finding?” Lister asked.

“Those little birdies are digesting as we speak.”

“And what about the rest of us? You were supposed to be finding food for everyone,” Lister said, annoyed. The Cat raised his perfectly groomed eyebrow.

“Do I look like a waiter to you? Do you see high-wasted pants and a clip on bow tie?” Lister was too tired to argue or able to muster up any surprise.

“Where’s Rimmer?” The Cat shrugged. “You were supposed to stick together, not wander off in an unfamiliar forest alone!”

“What’s gonna happen?” the Cat asked, phlegmatically. “Goal Post Head can’t get any deader.”

If Lister hadn’t already packed his spanner away he may have hurled it at the Cat. He just hoped the hologram had been more successful than the Cat at finding something to eat. Lister sighed. It was starting to get dark.

“We’d better go look for him. Come on.”

 

Rimmer was feeling slightly nauseous as he wandered around in a slow stroll, wondering if he’d undercooked his mushrooms. The breeze rustling through the trees felt good on his face. There was a slight musical quality to it, as though the leaves were made of glass, softly tinkling together.

He looked up as the rain started to drizzle again. Something dropping off the trees caught his attention. Rimmer watched as the bark on the limbs of the trees started to slough off, like layers of wet dead skin, revealing white bone underneath. Smaller branches looked like delicate finger bones, waving at him in the wind.

Rimmer stared, transfixed by this macabre sight, his stomach rolling and dropping like a rollercoaster. Leaves started falling and shattering on the ground with a loud pop, like exploding light bulbs. He thought he saw a pair of yellow eyes staring at him through the trees. Needing little extra incentive, Rimmer turned on his heel and started running full pelt in the opposite direction.

His heart hammered sharply in his chest, and sweat ran down his temples. He had no idea where he was going, all he knew was that he needed to get away. He stumbled and staggered, seeming to forget which order his legs were supposed to move in. The more he concentrated, the harder it was to propel himself forward.

Rimmer looked around for those predatory eyes and spotted Lister ahead of him. He staggered towards the man, frowning. His hand reached up and his fingers brushed against Lister’s cold, hard cheek.

“My god,” he gasped. “You’ve turned to stone.”

White stone underneath a patina of thick moss and lichen, Lister stood on a raised dais in a long robe, his hand posed in a benevolent symbol of benediction.

“Stay here,” he instructed the statue. “I’ll get help!” Rimmer pelted off, vaguely in the direction of Starbug.

 

“Rimmer!” Lister called out while Kryten’s eyes were glued to the psiscan, tracking the hologram’s light bee. The signal was moving erratically, and they were having difficulty following it.

“Arnold!” Kochanski called. Their voices echoed in the woods.

“I hear something,” the Cat said, stopping to listen. It was almost a minute before anyone else heard anything. Eventually the sound of rustling foliage grew louder and closer, and Rimmer sprinted out of the bushes with wild eyes.

“Lister!” He said. “You’ve got to come quick! Lister’s been turned into stone somehow. I found him out in the woods, I don’t know what happened.” Lister chewed on his lip for a moment.

“I’ve got to help you,” he said slowly.

“Yes!”

“Because you found me in the woods.”

“Yes!”

“And I’ve turned to stone?”

“Yes!”

Lister looked back at the group to make sure he wasn’t the one missing something. The others looked equally bemused. Satisfied, he turned back to Rimmer. The man was sweating and trembling, and his eyes looked glassy and black. The green of his iris had almost disappeared completely, pushed aside by his blown out pupils. Lister looked down at the container Rimmer still had in his hand.

“How many of those mushrooms did you eat?”

“What?”

“Those mushrooms in your basket. How many did you eat?”

“Eight or nine, I suppose.” Kryten scanned the contents of the container. “They’re morels,” Rimmer explained.

 “These are not morels, sir,” Kryten said.

“You’re tripping, man,” Lister laughed, putting a hand on Rimmer’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get back to the bug and you can lie down. You’ll be fine. You’ll be gonzo for a little while. Maybe a few hours. But you’ll be fine.”

Lister steered Rimmer back towards their camp and stopped in his tracks. The five crew members found themselves surrounded on all sides by warriors in shining red breastplates with intricate gold gilding, pointing fiercely sharp polearms and drawn bows, baring their long pointed teeth.

“Halt, interlopers! Your presence soils holy ground!”

“Lister, is this a hallucination?” Rimmer asked timidly.

“I don't think so,” he replied. “Look man, we just had to fix a flat tyre, and then jet out. We were just leaving.”

“Silence your fat upside down face,” the warrior hissed.

“Wait a minute,” one of the others gasped. “It can’t be. It can’t be!” A chorus of whispers trilled through the ring of warriors.

“Aye?”

“It looks just like him… it is! It’s him! Cloister the Stupid has returned to Fuchal!”

There was a collective gasp and the cat warriors lowered their weapons, followed by a loud moan from the Cat.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”


	2. Chapter 2

The troupe of cat warriors led Lister and the crew through the forest, surrounding them on all sides to protect them from whatever wild dangers they might encounter. The cats were all staring at Lister in a not-really-staring kind of way. It started raining again and Rimmer whined.

“Oh my god,” he said, looking up. “The sky is melting. We have to get out of here.” Lister put a hand on his back and tried to calm him down.

“The sky is not melting, Rimmer. It’s just raining. Will you chill out, please?” The cats began whispering to themselves again.

“Cloister travels with mutants and imbeciles. His compassion is truly infinite,” one of them said in awe.

The group reached the bottom of the mountain pass, where cable cars were waiting to take them up the mountain. Lister looked at Kryten.

“What is this, a cat ski resort?”

“We’re not walking up this mountain,” one of the cat warriors said. “Do you know how much buffing it would take to get the scratches out of these boots?”

They separated into three groups, five people fitting into one cable car. Rimmer and Lister with three cat warriors, Cat and Kryten with three cat warriors, and Kochanski was left with the remaining cat warriors. It took some cajoling to get Rimmer into the cable car.

“They’ve hollowed out a giant’s head and strung it up with its own intestines! I’m not getting in there!” He moaned, clutching his face. Lister had to bear hug him from behind and drag him into the car. Lister looked at the cat warriors sheepishly.

“You’ll have to forgive my friend here, he’s uh, not well. Had a bad batch of mushrooms.”

“You mean he ate the forest mushrooms? And he still lives?” Lister wasn’t sure how to respond to that without a lot of complicated explanations. So he just shrugged.

“Yeah, kinda.” The cats looked at the pair in wide eyed astonishment.

“Cloister travels with a Seer!” Lister looked confused while Rimmer bent over and dry heaved.

“A seer?”

“Only a chosen few can eat the forest mushrooms and survive their deadly poison. Those who do pass through the inner eye of the cosmos, attaining the knowledge of the universe, returning enlightened. Only the purest of clerics have ever been Seers, and it’s been a century since one has appeared.”

The cats basked in Lister and Rimmer’s celestial presence. Rimmer looked over at Lister.

“My shoes are eating my feet.”

 

“How did you come to travel with Cloister?” the cat warriors asked Cat. The Cat had briefly considered telling these poor saps that this wasn’t Cloister the Stupid, just Lister the Stupid, but upon realizing how he could milk the situation, decided to play along.

“I was the last cat left on Red Dwarf. Uh, the place the cat arcs left from. I saved him from his time prison. Let me tell you, he was a mess when I found him. It’s really all thanks to me that he’s functioning at all.”

“And this hideous creature,” they said, referring to Kryten. “Did he tame this monster?”

“You bet,” Cat said, slapping Kryten on the shoulder. The mechanoid was being conspicuously silent. “He’s our servant!”

Kryten had a deep dark sense of foreboding about this venture. He couldn’t imagine any situation where posing as God incarnate was going to end well for anyone.

 

Kochanski sat silently while four cat warriors glared at her. She had the vaguest feeling they weren’t too keen on her while they were outside. Now she was much surer of it.

“So…” she said. “You’re cat people, then?”

“Silence, temptress.”

“Excuse me?”

“We know you travel with Cloister the Stupid in order to seduce him and lead him astray. We will not allow you to sway him with your devil vagina.”

“Oh smeg,” was all she was able to say.

 

It was the longest ride in history for the crew, all except the Cat, who was lapping up the awe he and his posse were inspiring. When they finally arrived at the top of the mountain, above the clouds, the first thing that caught their attention was the gigantic spire tower that loomed above the landscape.

Out of the cable car, Kochanski quickly dashed to Lister’s side, grabbing his hand, inspiring looks of contempt from the cat warriors.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she hissed in Lister’s ear.

“What’s the rush?”

“I don’t want to end up as Kristine Magdalene up here.”

“It’ll be fine,” he assured her. “We’ll stick around a bit, let ‘em grovel, maybe get some supplies, then riseth into the cosmos upon our green nimbus. It’ll be a laugh.”

“They said I have a devil vagina!”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with Cloister the Stupid and his disciples of mutants, imbeciles, and vagina devils.”

The group was escorted into town. All the buildings seemed to be made up of compact hummocks sitting atop tall poles, and every surface was reflective and shiny. All the buildings were incredibly tall, but nothing was taller than the spire tower.

Two of the warrior cats blew into their silver trumpets.

“Cloister the Stupid has returned to Fuchal!” They bellowed. “Cloister the Stupid has returned!”

Of the cat people that the group could see, none of them stopped what they were doing, or turned to look at them.

“I can’t believe it,” one the cat warriors said. “I’ve never seen them so excited about anything before!”

They headed towards the spire tower, and as they got closer, they could see that the base of the tower was a giant, ugly, beat up hodgepodge of red metal bulkheads welded together. The arc that left Red Dwarf.

That’s what everyone saw, except for Rimmer. Rimmer saw an enormous beating heart, stuck into the ground with a deadly spike.

“Come on, smeghead,” Lister said, grabbing Rimmer’s arm and pulling him along.

They were met at the entrance by a tall, powerful looking cat priest in a red hat with a humourous arrow through the top. He looked as though his ancestors were panthers, not mere house cats. His yellow eyes bore into them with choleric expression.

Kochanski tugged at Lister’s sleeve again.

“Promise me you won’t leave me alone while we’re on this moon.”

“Aye?”

“Promise me!”

“Alright, I promise, I won’t let you out of my sight. But that means you have to help me babysit The All Seeing One over here,” he said, nodding to Rimmer who was trying to remember how many legs he was supposed to have.

“Welcome, travelers,” the cat priest greeted them in a voice that made Barry White sound like a tenor. “You must be tired from your long journey. Please, grace our humble temple and allow us to serve as your hosts.”

“Brutal,” Lister said.

 

The group was ushered into their own separate suites, except Lister and Kochanski, who insisted on staying together. The rooms were lavish, furnished in a gilded baroque style. King sized beds and en suite baths, wardrobe space that went on for days. Lister flopped on the bed and rested his hands behind his head.

“We need to let you go planet hopping more often,” he said to Kochanski.

“We need to get out of here,” she said.

“Will you relax? You almost as paranoid as Rimmer, and you didn’t have any of those magic mushrooms.”

“These people think you’re a god, Rimmer’s some kind of mad prophet, and I’m a temptress whore. There is no way this isn’t going to end disastrously.”

“All we have to do is play along for a few hours, then hop it back to the bug. It will be fine. I promise I won’t let them burn you as a witch or something.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.” He opened his arms to her and she climbed into his hug. “You’re our witch and we’re keeping you.”

There was a knock at the door and Lister got up to open it. He found himself staring at six voluptuous breasts, barely contained behind thin red silk, as a fierce looking cat woman in eight inch heels slunk into the suite.

“I am instructed to please our guest in whatever manner he sees fit.”

Lister stared at the cat woman for a full minute before looking back at Kochanski, who was glaring daggers into him. He looked back at the six breasted cat woman and back to Kochanski. He looked back at the cat woman.

“Maybe a nice pot of tea?” The cat woman looked slightly miffed, but swayed her hips in a seductive figure eight, clicking her heels powerfully out of the room. Lister looked back at Kochanski. “You’d better know how much I love you.”

 

The Cat, who had no moral qualms or emotional attachments to anything outside himself, had not sent his cat woman away, and his yowls could be heard in every room in the arc.

 

Rimmer had not been led to a suite. Instead, he had been led into some kind of anteroom by six cats dressed in white hooded monk robes. Rimmer swore he couldn’t see any feet beneath those robes.

“Oh my god,” he moaned. “You’ve finally come to drag me to Hell, haven’t you? What the smeg are you doing?” he asked as they started to undress him.

They ignored him and when he stood naked before them, one of the cats left while another folded his clothing neatly, placing it on a stone table. Rimmer whimpered as goose bumps spread across his chilled skin.

The other cat returned with a stone bowl filled with some kind of white paste. He set it in front of the hologram, and the six cat monks dipped their fingers into the paste and began painting esoteric sigils onto Rimmer’s face and body.

 

After a cold shower, Lister and Kochanski joined the others in the dining room. The Cat had a glow that could have rivaled Bikini Atoll, and Rimmer was dressed in a white robe with strange symbols painted on his face, staring vacantly at nothing. Lister sat at the head of the table with Kochanski at his left and Rimmer at his right.

Kryten hovered off to the side. One of the cat monks approached Lister and bowed.

“Excuse me, but shall the cubed monstrosity be allowed to sit at the table?” Lister raised an eyebrow.

“Of course he can. And he’s not a monstrosity, he’s our friend.” The cat bowed again, basking in Lister’s infinite compassion and allowed Kryten to sit at the table.

The tall, dark cat priest seated himself at the other end of the table, smiling thinly at the group.

“We are quite blessed to have you here, tonight of all nights.”

“Saturday?”

“Fuchal Day. It is quite auspicious.”

Waiters brought silver platters to the table, removing the domed cover. Sugar Puff sandwiches for starters. Rimmer was the first to enthusiastically dig into his sandwich.

“I’ve been craving one of these all night,” he said through a mouthful.

“It seems,” the cat priest began, “that some of our battle fatigued warriors may have been overly enthusiastic when they discovered your group.”

“What do you mean?” Lister asked, the only other person eating their sandwich.

“You must admit that the second coming of Cloister the Stupid is quite a claim.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would be.”

“And perhaps a more likely scenario is a group of bandits have come to visit with machinations to usurp power through the manipulation of our people’s most sacred beliefs.”

“That does sound more likely, yeah,” Lister had to agree. “In our defense though, we’re not bandits here to usurp anything from anyone.”

“I see.”

A heavy silence descended upon the group while their second dish was served, hot dogs topped off with chicken curry.

“What is your purpose here?” the cat priest asked. “Is this second coming, perhaps, to lay waste to the unbelievers?”

“Excuse me?”

“Our people are losing their faith,” he said grimly. “Every day I watch the people of Fuchal grow apathetic in their paradise. Slinking around, brashly displaying sinful acts of public coolness. They struggle for nothing, and feel they no longer need God in their lives. What I wouldn’t give for a good plague.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me,” Lister said, “is that the people here are too happy?”

“Sickeningly so.”

“And because they’re happy, they don’t need to turn to the Church of Cloister for guidance?”

“Personally, I don’t believe you to be Cloister at all. But you and band of freaks have taken in much of my remaining clowder. What I do believe is that this can be used to my advantage.” He gave them a thin, toothy grin. Lister shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“How do you mean?”

“I think using you as a figurehead to start doling out a few righteous smitings upon the heads of some of our more secular irritants would be a productive use of your visit.”

“What happens if we don’t want to righteously smite anyone?”

“We burn you all at the stake in the public square for being heretics.”

Rimmer leaned over to Lister conspiratorially.

“Are you going to eat that?”


	3. Chapter 3

One of the luxuriously comfortable common areas of the temple was decorated with large murals depicting the three temptations of Cloister the Stupid. The first image showed Cloister refusing the sexual advances of Kadiska the Whore, followed by Cloister paying no heed to the lies woven by Romman the Doubter, who insisted that Fuchal was fool’s goal. Finally Cloister was cast into his time prison by Helstar the Punisher, sacrificing his life for Frankenstein, the Holy Mother.

“You were right,” Lister sighed.

“Thank you,” Kochanski said.

“We need to get the smeg outta here,” he continued.

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s going to be a blue moon tonight.” Three heads cocked quizzically at the non sequitur coming from the hologram, who was currently laying on his back in front of the fireplace’s gaping maw.

“We’re on the moon, what are talking–”

“Nevermind,” Lister interrupted. “We need to figure out how to get out of here before they make me start martyring people.” Lister rubbed his face. This was a nightmare. The religion of Cloisterism followed step by step into the traps of every other religion ever invented; using people’s hopes and fears as tools against them for political power. And he was their mascot.

“Sirs, mum,” Kryten said. “Since we’ve been here, I’ve been studying the architecture of temple, and we may be able to find a way out without detection.”

“How?”

“Much of the base structure seems to be constructed with random pieces taken from Red Dwarf. Bulkheads, girders, frames, but most importantly, ducts. Endless tunnels, hidey holes, and burrows made from ducts run all through the temple. A lot of them don’t appear to go anywhere, and some I still haven’t found a beginning or end to, but they may prove an important factor for our escape.”

“Brutal,” Lister said. “Cat, do you think you’d be able to navigate– Cat?” He looked around. “Where the smeg did the Cat go?”

 

The priest poured chilled milk from his decanter, topping off the Cat’s crystal goblet.

“You could be a very important person here,” the priest told him. “Your value could truly be appreciated.”

“Those guys really don’t know how good they got it with me,” Cat said, shaking his head. The priest nodded sympathetically, though his eyes remained cold.

“How many outfits do you have on your little ship?” The Cat looked shame faced.

“Let’s just say it’s only in the five digit range.” The priest bravely kept his composure in the face of the confession.

“Here, that would be tripled. You’d no longer have to live in a cage with those animals. Sitting in the highest perches that only the mountain can provide. Hunting trips every afternoon with an endless supply of cute furry animals to torture. Not to mention,” he paused dramatically, “the women, which I noticed you’ve already enjoyed.” A warm grin spread across the Cat’s face. “All this could be yours.”

“And all I have to do in return is rat out and betray my friends to you?”

“Yes.” The priest said. The Cat’s expression cooled.

“Wait a minute. What’s the catch?”

 

Lister and Kochanski were about to go look for the Cat when he returned to the room, picking food out of his teeth with a toothpick made from the femur of a rodent.

“What’s happening, monkeys?”

“Where the smeg have you been? Never mind. Kryten said we might be able to get out of here through some of these ducts. Do you think you’d be able to navigate them?”

“What is the big rush? Why are you so eager to leave a place that worships you as a god?”

“Because I’m not a god!” Lister said hotly. “And they’re gonna use me as an excuse to kill each other! Again!”

“It’s going to be a blue moon tonight!” Rimmer said again, standing in front of the hearth, his eyes rolled back in his head. “It’s going to be a blue moon and the rivers will run red with blood! The green hills will run red with blood! But it’s going to be a blue moon tonight!” His voice became louder and more hysterical, his hands shaking in front of him like a mad Baptist preacher.

“Oh, we don’t have time for this,” Lister growled.

Before any of them could continue, a commotion could be heard outside their door. Shouting and banging and yowling and crashing. Lister was about to go to the door when it was kicked open by one of the armoured cat warriors. His face and his breast plate were smeared with blue paint.

“Cloister, my Lord! We’ve come to rescue you!” He and several other blue daubed warriors ushered the group out of the common room, along with six cat monks, who appeared to have made head wraps out of Rimmer’s uniform.

Chaos was erupting around them with fangs, claws, swords, and polearms lashing out to cut down enemy cats. Lister’s group was stalled a few times as their entourage fought off warriors still loyal to the priest.

“What the smeg is going on?” Lister shouted when they made it outside.

“We knew, we always knew,” the cat warrior said in breathless joy. “We always knew the hats were blue! Years of living this lie, and finally you arrived and gave us the sign!”

“What sign?”

“Arriving from the heavens in your blue chariot, your Seer wearing garments of blue. We knew one day you would come and turn the hearts and minds of the heretics!” The blue hooded monks all nodded furiously.

“They. Were. Supposed. To. Be. _GREEN!_ ”

Before the group got much further, several of the cat warriors were felled by arrows, leaving the crew exposed. A band of warrior cat women wearing very sturdy, sensible armour, shook their bows and roared.

“We’ve come to liberate Kadiska the Whore!” Eyes turned to Kochanski. “Kadiska, who hath unfairly been vilified in the scriptures! Kadiska, the patron saint of all women slandered against! We’re not going to stand for this treatment by fearful and ignorant men any longer!” They raised their weapons and roared once more, and ran off to charge the hoard of red and blue armoured cats in pursuit.

The crew ran in the opposite direction of the battle, towards the woods, followed by the monks. When they reached the mountain lift, the monks embraced Rimmer in a group hug, rubbing their heads all over him, and stayed behind to operate the lift for the crew.

 

It was difficult navigating the woods in the darkness, but with Cat, who could see perfectly in the dark, on point, and Kryten’s chest plate illuminating the way for everyone else, they managed to stumble back to Starbug and Blue Midget.

“Let’s get the smeg out of here,” Lister said. He went cold as a voice in front of him responded.

“No one is going anywhere,” the cat priest thundered, standing between the group and their ships, his finger on the trigger of the bazookoid. With crazed yellow eyes and blood running down his face from a scalp wound, the priest looked like a demon. He flashed his fangs at them. “You’ve brought ruin and chaos to the true religion! And by God you’re not getting off this moon without being martyred.”

The Cat strolled casually next to the priest, turning to face the crew. Lister looked stunned.

“Cat, man, what are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing, monkey?” A triumphant grin spread across the priest’s face. It fell quicker than the first dump of a man with terminal diarrhea as Cat kneed him in the testicles, swiping the bazookoid as he went down.

“You’re crazy if you think you’re gonna get me to sell out the Boys from the Dwarf. They might be monkeys, but they’re _my_ monkeys.”

 

And so as the evening of Fuchal Day drew to a close, Cloister the Stupid and his disciples of mutants, imbeciles, and vagina devils ascended into the heavens on chariots of green and blue, hoping things of Fuchal might cool down after another 200 years.


End file.
